IM AN ORC?

Brek ran.

They had sent him upstream first, where the land held tighter against the river’s pull and where shrubs concealed him from anyone looking south down the road. Zira had written the message in brief lines, then Ruk handed him the dark metal sliver wrapped in cloth.

Hollower marks confirmed. Artificial seam wounds. Dark metal anchor. Unknown listener south on the river. Watch every weak water line. Do not touch spiral patterns. Send Davan and Rin to Millford.

Grasha checked the runner’s pack for a third time, then seized Brek’s forearm.

“If the message changes, change it just long enough to make your mark. You bring word home before anything else.”

Brek nodded sharply and disappeared into the reeds.

Ruk watched until they were concealed by river grass as well. Then he turned south.

Past the bend, the river grew narrow. It ran between small fields and a long rise of dark trees, carrying shafts of morning light across the water. The far echo from the metal fragment lingered in his boundary sense, distant but steady. It did not tug like a feeder hole. It did not sing like a true hollow note. It simply existed, a thin distortion trailing downstream.

“We move,” he announced to the group.

Sorn stepped into the lead before anyone else took a stride. The shadow- walker eased into the brush along the west bank and vanished. Karg and Grasha took ground either side of Ruk, while Zira and Zree remained in the center with Lenna close enough to hear Zree’s instructions but far enough from the riverbank that they would not be lost if it collapsed around them.

They tracked the thread through the first mile without speaking.

Sparse signs told the river walked through living land. Damp trails left by deer. Furrows plowed for planting. A split fence repaired with new rope. But beneath those markings, the water whispered secrets. He felt it whenever he touched the seam. False seams had opened and been closed along that bank before; the ragged old repair work held the settled dust of age. Then, near the river’s edge, he located newer cuts.

Not one wide gash. Many small ones.

Each had been scored, tested with a fingernail, then abandoned.

He stopped beside a willow whose roots hung uncovered across a widening breach. Three chalky stones rested in the mud beneath its roots. Setters had begun reaching for its branches but had not gone far enough. Rather than complete a spiral, they formed half a circle, an incomplete invitation.

Zree knelt beside them, careful not to touch. Her eyes shone amber.

Practice marks,” she whispered. “Someone is teaching, or someone is teaching many.”

“How long,” Ruk asked.

She examined the stones for a few seconds. “Two days. Maybe three. Someone had plans to return, but the seam healed around it because they did not.”

Grasha scanned south down the river. “Then they never got the chance.”

“Or someone found them.”

Karg finished the thought.

A whistle sounded from the trees.

It was quiet and short. Not a warning. Direction.

The group formed a loose column and moved across the field. They found Sorn waiting beneath an abandoned grain shed. The shed sat alone by the water with a sagging roof and doorway ripped away. Sorn was down on one knee beside the corner with a gloved finger pressed against the dirt.

“Two people walked here,” he said. “One traveled hard. The other stayed behind and covered the path where he could. Both wore narrow boots. Same tread as the river.”

He pointed to a notch carved into the shed’s side. Someone had scratched against the wood, leaving a shallow groove: three nested angles identical to the dark metal fragment.

“They waited here,” Sorn continued. “One watched road. The other searched river.”

Nym would understand what that meant, Ruk realized.

His annoyance was instant enough that he felt guilty for it. He had not seen her in too long. Reasons had piled up. Missions that required moving off-clan paths. People who needed knowledge without learning its source. But absence with reasons was still absence.

Zira regarded him from across the field, reading his thoughts. She nodded but did not ask.

Sorn walked around the building and returned with a scrap of oilskin in hand. Someone had drawn a river map on it in black ink. Nearly every mark identified known crossings and trails. Three circles had been drawn around individual sites.

One circled river bend they had just passed.

Another circled south, at a place named Reed Market.

The final circle sat downstream, where current forced itself through a narrow cut of stone.

“They do not seek to hide the path well,” Lenna said.

“They don’t want anyone to recognize what the circles mean,” Zree added.

Ruk studied the map. Three locations. Three opportunities to score a wound. They had closed the first site. The middle destination sat close enough they could reach it before sundown if they hastened their pace.

“Reed Market,” he said. “Let us go there first.”

They had taken twenty steps when a knife hit dirt in front of Ruk’s boot.

It was flint knapped into a hunting blade, sharp along one edge with worn red thread binding the grip.

Ruk halted.

Someone had not dropped it from the trees up ahead. It had come from the ridge behind them.

Nym knelt beside him in answer, bow in hand.

Much and not at all how he remembered her. Bent double by the tall grasses where once she had towered over them. Dark hair drawn tight against her skull. Daggers nestled at either hip. Bright eyes sweeping each member of the group before settling on him once more. But she no longer wore the old clan leathers. Instead, she had chosen a dark travel coat, mud-stained about the shoulders, human merchant’s clasp at her throat, and a line of thin cuts across one forearm.

“You still travel through fields when people want you dead,” she called over her shoulder.

In one fluid movement, Grasha’s axe leapt from its stand. Karg tensed, stepping to place herself between Nym and Zira. Sorn did neither. He regarded her with the ease of one who knew her well before she allowed herself to be known.

Ruk pocketed the knife.

Years ago, in the cavern, another knife had materialized in his grasp when he had been weaponless and alone. Someone had given it to him silently, casting him a glance that said they had seen enough fight in him to no longer call him a runt.

“You throw farther than I remember,” he said.

She shrugged and closed the distance between them. Her mouth tilted upward as if tasting a smile, then deciding against it.

“You get slower.”

She stopped short of Karg’s reach. Grasha’s axe remained aloft.

“Give me one reason why I should not knock you down,” Grasha said.

“Because I’ve been tracking whoever put your river mark since five months ago,” Nym replied. She did not shift her gaze from Grasha. “And because I know why they circled Reed Market.”

The axe trembled another moment, then came down.

Ruk handed her the flint knife.

She considered it and then him. “You keep throwing surprises at me.”

“It works.” He kept his tone even.

She snorted. “Fine. Keep it.” She turned the knife between two fingers and slid it back into his hand. “You need reminders.”

Zira stepped forward, sliding to meet Nym across the small field. Dark eyes regarded her neither angrily nor with resentment but carefully.

“You know who’s carving the marks?”

“I know pieces,” Nym answered. “Enough to recognize someone is organizing this. River merchants. Land developers. Ruin tourists. Soldiers who deserted after the border wars and still hide when humans look their way. They deal under pseudonyms and are paid in dark metal. They refer to themselves as the Quiet Mouth when they think they’re being discreet.” She glanced down at the fragment tucked in Ruk’s hand. “That is not their mark. That is a Court mark. Whoever is below them only uses the Hollow Court name when they’re trying to scare me.”

Davan’s phrase echoed through Ruk’s memory: *Something larger walks in front of it. *

“What is down at Reed Market,” he asked.

Her eyes flicked to the map clutched in Sorn’s hands.

“A deal,” she answered. “Buyers are taking possession of hollow-metal anchors tonight. Small enough to slip into a barrel of grain. Large enough to punch through a weak seam and widen it.”

“How many men,” Karg said.

“Enough that killing them all opens the meeting. Not enough that we can’t take them if we arrive first.”

“And you have tracked them alone,” Ruk said.

She met his eyes again. Expecting the sharp reply, he waited. It did not come.

“With others,” she corrected herself. “People who wouldn’t miss me if I was lost.”

Wind rustled willow leaves above them. For a moment, their shared history sat openly between them: the cavern journey, the troll war, everything that came after when clan work expanded and their roads diverged.

He still would not ask where she had been. Not yet. He had sent others into the world to carry weight they did not understand. That would be his mistake to confess when they finished.

“You are no longer tracking them alone,” he stated. “You come with us.”

Her face did not soften. Her shoulders did.

“As what?”

“Tracker,” Ruk said. “Official eyes. You see what we cannot. You inform me where the enemy moves. You do not walk into shadow without leaving behind someone to find you.”

Grasha eyed Nym then back at Ruk. “We need you to remember that last part.”

“Someone’s gotten king.” Nym drawled.

“I am leader of a territory now.” He gestured around him. “You were leader of a tunnel once too. You just had worse tunnels.” She regarded each member of their group: Zira with her notebooks, Zree listening to whispers in the brush, Lenna fighting the urge to stare openly, Sorn silent in a copse of shadow. “Alright. I’m in. But I choose my specialists.”

Ruk nodded.

Sorn passed her the oilskin map. She scanned it twice, brow furrowing once before smoothing back into place.

“They’ll have guards at the north road and docks,” she stated. “We do neither. Old mill farms dug an irrigation ditch that runs under the east storage sheds. If whoever is selling this tonight still uses the same warehouse, it will bring us close enough to hear their negotiations without being spotted.” She tapped the map. “First we need to know who still uses Reed Market.”

“She still uses,” Zira said.

Nym’s eyes narrowed but she did not voice the doubt that hovered there.

“I’ve been to Reed Market,” she said instead. “The people there think they sell crops and fish. They do. Some of them. The ones that don’t sell places where the world ends.”

He slid the river map into his coat.

“Then we end that meeting before it begins,” Ruk replied.

Daylight held firm as they traveled south toward Reed Market, following Nym between fields. Behind them, the river glided onward with its quiet sickness intact. Before them waited the second wound.